Holy Scoundrel (26 page)

“We are?” Sophie asked. “I thought I was supposed to learn to sail to America.”

“Not without a ring on your finger you’re not,” Patience said. “Months at sea? Who knows what could happen between you?”

“I know,” Grant said catching Patience in his arms and kissing her senseless.

A grin split Sophie’s face. “Patience! This means that I finally made a match.”

Patience pulled from her husband’s kiss, dazed and happy. “Yes, you did.”

Good wishes followed, as did more tender care for Nick from Sophie.

As Gabriel and Lacey were about to take their quiet leave of the happy gathering, Julian arrived to partake of the festivities. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said to Lace. “I know I wasn’t invited to the wedding, but Nick invited me to the ball after I helped find Bridget. I think you know Miss Olivia Prout and her mother, who deigned to accompany us?”

“Julian is our escort for the evening,” Lady Prout said. “Julian, dear, may I have a word with the newlyweds while you partner Olivia in a dance?”

“Certainly.” Julian bowed and took Olivia’s hand.

As she regarded them, Prout’s visage went rigid. Ire darkened her eyes. “You think you’ve bested me with this marriage, but I tell you this, vicar, you cannot raise a harlot to the status of vicar’s wife. In due course, the arrangement can do nothing but go wrong and turn you into a defrocked vicar, which I will make certain happens. You will end as nothing but a sinner’s spouse. No parish will want you. I’ll see to that. My connections in the church, through our dear bishop, are vast and long-reaching. I have money and power, which you turned your back on. I take umbrage with that. You will see that crossing me was your worst mistake
,
afte
r
marrying Lacey Ashton.”

“Do not bestow that condescending smile upon me, missy!” Prout snapped at Lace.

“There is nothing so sad,” Lace said, “as a woman who does not know her place or her limitations. I know what I am. I have made peace with my Maker. But you think you are His equal. That will becom
e
you
r
downfall. I wish you a soft landing. Good evening, Lady Prout.”

Gabriel bowed, slipped his arm around Lace, and walked her out the door. “Don’t let her see you tremble,” he whispered in her ear, looking for all the world as if he were nibbling and kissing it.

MacKenzie and Ivy waited for them.

“Thank you, MacKenzie,” Lace said with a hug, “for staying at the Towers tonight in case Bridget needs anything.”

“Prout is there,” Gabe said. “She wangled an invite through Julian. She’ll try to spread her venom but our friends won’t stand for it. I’m not worried there. It’s Bridget I’m worried about. Keep the old harridan away from the girls, will you?”

“We’ll take care of Prout,” Mac said.

“This is your time. Don’t worry.” Ivy rubbed his nose. “I’m staying the night at Nick’s as well. You won’t see any of us until late tomorrow. Right now, in the chapel, a midnight supper awaits with a few surprises. At any rate, Rectory Cottage is yours until tomorrow. Leave a note on the kitchen door if you need more time. Nick has invited us for as long as we need to stay.”

As Mac and Ivy returned to the Towers, Gabe and Lace clasped hands and veered toward the Abbey chapel, but Gabe kept looking down at her. “I am not afraid of Prout, and if you let her ruin our wedding night, I will be very cross.”

“She no longer has a hold over us. She is all talk. I have forgotten her every word.
”
If only.

“Ah, I have a brilliant and beautiful bride.”

“So many wonderful friends in attendance. It was an enchanting wedding, Gabe. I dreamed for years of being your bride.”

He turned to her. “My bride,” he repeated just to hear the sound of it. “Kiss me, my bride.”

She kissed his hands, and there in the woods of the Ashcroft Estate, she undid the buttons on his frockcoat, his waistcoat, his shirt, just enough to twirl a bit of chest hair around her eager fingers.

Unexpectedly, he kissed her in a way he had not dared, till now, but he stopped before he lost control. He couldn’t let passion spoil another wedding night. So he pulled her close until his heart slowed.

“I feel your heart racing.”

“You are mine,” he said. “Never to be taken away again. I have so much to make up to you for. I figured it out. Dense, I may be, but not forever, praise be. You lied about your babe’s father to save my living, to keep your mother from ruining me.”

“I always thought that I should make up to you for my lie, though if you forgave me one more time—”

He chuckled and touched his eye. “And my timing was so good.”

“I’m sorry about giving you a black eye.”

“I deserved it. You showed me the greatest example of love imaginable. You bore my child alone, took my sin as yours, just to keep me from losing my dream.”

“A dream that meant everything to you.”

“No. You were the dream that meant the most to me. You are still allowing everyone to think badly of you to protect me. You know the true meaning of love, and because of it, I cannot believe that you love me, unworthy creature that I am.”

“Let us agree that neither of us is worthy,” she said, her arm around his waist, his around hers as they approached the ruins. And since neither of us is worthy, we are perfect for each other.”

He chuckled as they entered the chapel and stopped.

More candles, they found. Fresh-lit tall tapers on window ledges and a dining table with fine linens and flowers in vases, covered dishes, pewter plates, and cutlery.

Over in the corner, a bedroom of sorts with a stack of mattresses made up with fine linens, a table beside it with more flowers and candles.

“So you can sleep beneath the stars, which you love, Ivy must have remembered, though you’ll not be alone on your mattress this night,” Gabe said throwing back the covers, inviting her to a world of silk and promise. . . with him.

But they had not begun to take in their surroundings, so she turned to do so, shiveringly well aware that their bed beneath the stars awaited their pleasure

And in the farthest corner, inside the chapel ruin, the gypsy wagon stood, minus its horses, its colors bright beneath the moon, with a note on the door. “Eat, sleep, inside or out, makes no difference. Or take your bride to Rectory Cottage, the two of you will remain alone. When you wait as long as you did, i
t
ha
s
to be special. With our blessing, Ivy and MacKenzie.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lacey went to uncover the dishes. She was starving.

Her new husband stood with his hands behind his back and regarded the possibilities. “So, my love, after we dine, which I presume you wish to do first—”

“It is the thing to do,” she said, mocking him in her own way because she was surely as ready as he to celebrate their wedding in the most passionate and sensual of ways. “Besides, I will faint from hunger if we do not. It is nearly tomorrow and I have missed dinner, after all. And MacKenzie would be heart-broken if we ignored her feast.”

Gabriel began to approach her in a rather sinister but titillating way, much like a predator, a wolf perhaps, like Ivy’s Sergei—well, a little bit of Sergei and a bit more of Parson puppet—stalking its prey. “After we dine, then,” he whispered, stroking the skin of her breasts above her décolletage. “Where should we make love? Beneath the stars? In the gypsy wagon? Or in Rectory Cottage?”

“Yes, please.”

His head came up quite fast at that. “What? All three?”

“Beneath the stars, to start. We’ll go for silk and sensation, teasing and tantalizing, with all the candles on, a first coming together of husband and wife, shy, sweet, slow, raising pleasure like a mighty wave that spills as it crests.”

He cleared his throat. “What will be left for the gypsy wagon?”

“There, we will be ruthless lovers. We will ride each other until we rock the wagon and cry out with mutually unbearable pleasure.”

Gabriel took to standing differently.

She’d affected him and she reveled in it . . . because that’s what she’d set out to do.

“And at the cottage?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a rasp now.

“Lastly, in our marriage bed, we’ll tear each other’s clothes off . . . and go to sleep.”

He caught his breath and she laughed at what she’d done to him, boldly raking his body with her gaze, stopping to admire his arousal so long, she’d turned his readiness into a saluting soldier.

“Sleep?” he asked, playing along. “On our wedding night?”

“Well, it’s midnight now, so by the time we get to the rectory, it’ll probably be the morning after our wedding. What are we, heathens to make love during the day? Lud, yes!” she added.

“Oh, I love it when you get forceful.” He lunged.

She squeaked and stepped back. “But not too forceful.”

He stopped, held his hands behind his back and, whistling, he headed past their bed beneath the stars and out the side door.

She laughed.

He peeked back inside.

“In Rectory Cottage, which sounds so decadent,” she said, curling her finger his way to draw him toward her, “we’ll get naked and eat passion whole, throw our bodies into the earthiest of gratifications. Love-licks, mouths exploring, suckling each other, hand
s
everywher
e
. I’ll become the mate to the wolf hiding inside you, and we’ll pleasure each other until we howl at the moon and expire of exhaustion.” She met him halfway.

“One step closer, Lacey, and I’ll spill my seed, I swear.”

“Words,” she said, stopping. “They’re so powerful when painting a picture.”

“Well you’d better paint another picture or I’ll be useless to you.”

“I’m hungry?” she tried.

He shook his head. “Hunger and the scene you described feel as one to me. You’ve only made it worse.”

Lace fell to the grass in giggles, her silver gown puddled around her, mirroring a dazzle of sparks, like shooting stars made of moonbeams and candlelight.

After watching her for a minute or more, Gabriel bent to raise her face to his by placing a finger beneath her chin. “Of all the memories we made today, I think I’ll carry this image of you in my heart forever. I’ll call it
:
Seductres
s
.”

“Caught,” she whispered, cupping his cheek. “Happy wedding day, Gabriel.”

“Happy life, Lacey.”

“Can we eat now?”

He groaned and gave her a hand up so they could.

She uncovered the courses. “I’m glad the pews have been taken away, or I’d feel as if our guests were watching us in our bed beneath the stars later.”

“You might have doused me with cold water with that remark.”

“Not in the condition you’re in.” She chuckled and kissed him.

They sat as close as two people could and fed each other bits of turkey and ham pie, pears in red wine, pippin pie, and bites of steamed lemon pudding with sugar bells on top. To drink, Mac had made a weak champagne punch.

Lacey raised her glass. “To our family.”

Gabe nodded. “All three.”

“Our family.”

Gabe went into Ivy’s wagon, which surprised her, until she heard the strains of a Viennese waltz.

He returned to take her hand.

“How does it play without someone turning the crank?” she asked.

“Ivy taught me this afternoon how to change the music and run it with a coin. He often puts it outside during street shows and lets his audience choose the music.”

“I’m glad we’re here in our secret place.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Not secret anymore.”

He twirled her, slowed to a decadent waltz, caught her mouth with his, stole her breath with love, let his lips linger and toy with hers, his tongue, his hands making free with her person, until they were all but making love with each move of their legs and torsos, his leg between hers, abrading her sex, her knees set to buckle.

“It was rather cheeky of MacKenzie and Ivy to set up a bed for us beneath the stars, wasn’t it? Mac must’ve blushed from here to the sea.”

“For all that we’ve scandalized the town, we’re rather naïve, we two. It seems that Ivy and Mac have had an understanding for years, now.”

“You mean that they—”

“Every chance they get. He won’t stay in his own room tonight any more than he does when he stays here. You didn’t wonder why he picked a room on the third floor in the servant’s quarters? And this? Only lovers understand what lovers who practically have to steal their wedding day need in a wedding night.”

Lacey stopped dancing. “I’m shocked.”

“You’re surprised is what you are, Lacey Kendrick—I told you that would be your name.”

“Now don’t pick a quarrel, I’m rather liking you right now,” she warned.

He laughed, swept her off her feet, and brought her to the mattresses in the corner of the ruins, set her on the satin bedding, and went down with her.